Band 6.0 IELTS Writing Task 1 Model Answer

Overall Band Score: 6.0 · Cambridge IELTS 17 · 2026-08-15

IELTS Writing Task 1 question

The parents of your Australian friend Chris have invited you to a surprise birthday party for him/her. Write a letter to Chris's parents. In your letter:

• say why you think Chris will enjoy the surprise party
• explain why you won't be able to attend the party
• give details of a plan to see Chris at a different time

You do NOT need to write any addresses.

Begin your letter as follows:

Dear Mr and Mrs Collins,

Student answer (Band 6.0)

Dear, Uncle and aunty

I hope you and my friend doing great. I am also excited to come there and join in your happiness on chris birthday and im making a plan for long time to meet you and give plesant surprise to my friend, because chris likes surprise a lot and i am thinking to organize big party for him. where im planing to invite his all friends , bring his favourite cake and also buying new iphone for him beacuse i heard his phone is broken recently.

But, unfortunatly my exam are coming next week and its impossible for me to come over and there is no way to cancel the exam because my final semester is going on.

However, i can do one thing for now, after done my exam, i will definately come there and give him a surprise and will stay there for 1 week with you.

Your faithfully

Ramandeep

AI examiner evaluation

Task Achievement / Task Response — Band 6.0

You have addressed all three bullet points required by the prompt: explaining why Chris will enjoy the surprise, stating why you cannot attend, and proposing an alternative plan. However, the tone is inconsistent with the task requirements. You were asked to write to the parents of your friend, which requires a formal or semi-formal tone, but your language is overly casual and lacks the appropriate social register. Additionally, some ideas, such as the plan to buy an iPhone, are slightly unrealistic for a letter to a friend's parents, which affects the overall appropriateness of the response.

Coherence and Cohesion — Band 6.0

The letter is organized into three paragraphs, which is a good structure for a letter. However, the flow of ideas is somewhat disjointed. The use of cohesive devices is limited and occasionally mechanical, such as the repetitive use of 'and' to connect clauses. The transition between the explanation of the surprise and the reason for your absence is abrupt. To improve, you should use a wider variety of linking words and phrases (e.g., 'furthermore', 'consequently', 'however') to create a smoother progression of ideas between sentences and paragraphs.

Lexical Resource — Band 5.5

Your vocabulary is generally adequate for the task, but it is quite basic and repetitive. There are several spelling errors, such as 'plesant' instead of 'pleasant', 'unfortunatly' instead of 'unfortunately', and 'definately' instead of 'definitely'. You also use informal phrasing like 'doing great' and 'come there', which is not ideal for a letter to parents. To reach a higher band, you should aim to use more precise vocabulary and ensure your spelling is accurate, as these errors occasionally distract the reader.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy — Band 5.5

There are frequent grammatical errors throughout the letter, particularly regarding subject-verb agreement and sentence structure. For example, 'I hope you and my friend doing great' should be 'I hope you and my friend are doing great'. You also have issues with punctuation, such as the incorrect use of commas after 'Dear' and 'Uncle'. The sentence structures are mostly simple or compound; you need to incorporate more complex sentence forms, such as relative clauses or conditional structures, to demonstrate a wider grammatical range and improve accuracy.

See this exact question answered at other band scores — the same prompt compared across bands.

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